Darkness' Light
by Riona Neil
Summary: Two sister's torn apart by corruption and power lust. In a world where dark Jewels are a liability for the common, can a sisters' bond protect them from the Blood-taint surrounding them? Could it protect more? Please R&R, thank you.
1. Prologue: A mother's love

The winter was long and harsh. The doors and windows, frozen shut and piled deep under the drifts of snow, would not even have been opened if they could be. Only the mad and the desperate would venture into the four month storm that winter had become. The sky had wept her frozen tears incessantly since the solstice. The manor was eerily quiet. Not even the babes in the nursery cried out. Everyone had long since cried themselves out. And no one wanted an ice coated face.

All semblance of a normal routine had been abandoned after the first month. No one could bring themselves to do the mundane tasks which made up their day. Maids wandered about in a daze. Some carried dusters or brooms and made negligent passes with them to no real effect, there were only so many places to circulate the dust to in a closed environment. The food that came out of the kitchen was imperfect to say the very least. Distraight chefs couldn't focus long enough to complete the meal properly. Food was regularly burnt to a crisp, or else served next to raw, if not frozen, like everything else. 

No one cared, no one noticed a lot of the time. Not even the Lady, usually so meticulous, so precise in the up keep of the manor home. She now spent her days within her chambers. In fact it had been no few months since she had set foot outside of those rooms. She spent her days lounging on a divan, sometimes with an abstract maid attending to her hair. She hadn't seen her twin daughters for weeks, but the infants occupied her mind overwhelmingly, when she focused at all. Their father had fallen victim to pneumonia just shortly before their birth, and she pitied them for that. The Lady had had a very strong relationship with her father, and it had shaped her in many ways.

The birth had been a hard one and in the weeks it took her to recover the house was buried in the sparking snow. In fact the snow had begun on the night she went into labour, that solstice that seemed worlds away instead of a few months. She rearranged the soft, lavender robe she wore to better cover her legs. She glanced to her left and found herself staring into her own silvery gray, eyes in the reflections of her vanity mirror. She noticed her brow was creased in thought and wondered distantly what it was she was thinking about.

The maid next to her head, shook off whatever daydream she'd been involved in and resumed the motions of brushing her mistress' slightly curled, sable hair for a few strokes before losing her thoughts again. The Lady's thoughts were slowly and inexorably drawn back to her daughters, asleep down the hall. A lot of thought she had didn't quite seem to add up, but she couldn't figure out why. The discrepancies were there, she just couldn't figure out where they were, or why these thoughts shouldn't make sense. She caressed the Tiger Eye Jewel that hung in gold around her throat. Her Birthright Jewel, she'd felt a strange aversion to her Purple Dusk recently. The shade of purple reminded her of frozen skin. Surely her own thought must make sense. Why was she confused about what she was thinking? What was she thinking about anyhow? She knew it had been important but she couldn't even remember what it was she'd been thinking about a moment.

She felt that she must surely be upset by such a thing, it simply wasn't normal. But at that moment the young girl combing her hair drew the comb sharply along her scalp. She angrily brushed aside her abstract maid and sent the shuffling woman on to bed. Odd, she normally required her maids to aide her through the motions of preparing for bed. Why had she sent the girl away? She flexed her right hand absently, slipping the snake tooth smoothly in and out of it's sheath beneath her ring finger, also decorated with a piece of Tiger Eye. She absently reflected that it would need milking soon, the venom would begin to thicken soon. Thoughts of her two daughter slid on unnoticed at a deeper level of consciousness, reliving the event's of the past four months and arranging them into one thought, though she didn't know it yet.

Her husbands death from the sudden cold one week before the birth, the snows that began with the first pangs of labour. The snows that hadn't stopped and showed no signs of stopping. The little illnesses the staff had been picking up since the house had been closed. The dozens of little things that had gone wrong. The missing items, forgotten tasks. All the strange behaviour. And with a nearly audible click the thought and everything it entailed took hold of Lady Meriva's mind. She leapt from the divan, grey eyes flashing in shock and outrage. 

This was all their fault.

Not even bothering to slip on a pair of slippers as guard against the cold stone floors, she swept out of her room and along down the hallway, into the nursery wing. She stepped through the closed door, it had been weeks since she'd performed even the simplest of Craft and the surge of Power felt alien and lovely. Sparring no more than a glance at the dozing nanny in an overstuffed chair on the far side of the room, she stalked on silent feet up to the huge ornate cradle which held both her sleeping daughters. The babes slept wrapped in each other's tiny arms, the picture of innocence. The thought disgusted Meriva.

Striking her ring finger nail against her thumbnail, she drew the snake tooth all the way out, and contracted the sack until a drop of venom glistened on the tip. They had taken her husband away from her and they were wreaking havoc on her house hold. She would not stand for it. She placed her hand on the pillow beside the sleeping infants.

She didn't even have a second to wonder at pain between her shoulder blades before she collapsed to the floor. She was roughly rolled over and into the moonlight streaming through the window. She watched her maid's expression turn from outrage to shock when she recognised her mistress. "Oh, Lady!" she cried out. "I did not know you. I thought you an assailant all robbed in darkness as you are." Meriva suddenly became aware of the black cloak she had draped about her as she left her rooms. "I will get help, wait here." But she could already feel the sweet embrace of the Mother Night.

***

"I swear, sir, I did not recognise her. I would never have struck at her had I known." The frantic maid ran over her own words in her haste to explain her actions. The head butler crouched over the still form of their former Mistress.

He idly bounced the tiny knife he'd drawn from the Lady's back in the palm of his hand "Do not apologise to me, Cida. I fear that what you've done was necessary." He looked at the young maid seriously, and met with a worried and confused stare he lifted the body's right hand into the circle of his candle light to reveal the still wet and gleaming snake tooth. Cida gasped, "Indeed, child. I fear the confinement had gone to our well loved Lady's head. She must have lost her reason, the Twisted Kingdom may well have claimed her."

"But why would she harm the children? Even in madness?"

"Who knows what she saw in the shattered landscape. Leave it now, Cida. I will make sure that the truth of the matter is known. You will not be penalised for this. You will get good references from this manor at it's closing."

"It closing? But what of the girls, Sir? What will become of them?" Cida asked earnestly, genuinely concerned for their well being.

"I fear that Rhoae and Mirne are no longer our concern."


	2. For their own good

Novan strode purposefully through the halls of the manor home in Drega, Hayll's capital. He always felt conflicted when in Drega. He hated the city for everything it was; it was cold and lifeless, there was barely a patch of greenery anywhere in the entire city. The whole place stank; the streets were dirty with the inevitable grit of all those people living close together. Garbage was piled in the alleys. The place was over crowded and stank of stale human sweat. And all that was aside from the thousands of frightened, angry physic scents that assaulted him the moment he got near the place. But he felt a strange thankfulness to the disgusting city. It was here that he had been shaped into what he was today. He couldn't help but feel that he owed the gray faced city for the coldness they had instilled in him. He smiled a small feral smile at the thought; a strange thing indeed to be thankful for, but it was his hard shell, his cold veneer, that allowed him to survive the courts.

His smile widened minutely as he noticed horrified nobility scurry past, or else freeze where they stood as the watched him pass. Noticed one Yellow Jeweled witch leaning smugly against a wall with a self-assured, crooked little smile plastered across her face, dressed in complete formal attire, in the middle of the day. Without even breaking stride he stared her down, golden eyed meeting as he strode towards her. Even as the shock began to register on her face, he reached out and caressed a golden-brown cheek gone ashen.

He couldn't stand the nobility. Their blatant disregard for their duties to their people and to the land upset him. And what's more, they truly seemed to enjoy the perversion that had come to Blood society. They reveled in the free reign they had given themselves. The common people he had no problem with, be they Blood or landen, so long as they had no problem with him. But those people were becoming fewer and farther between. And even those who feared and hated him, he could not bring himself to blame. That debt fell squarely on three sets of shoulders.

A thousand years ago, as memories of the long ago Witch who had cleansed the realms finally began to fade into obscurity, three ambitious Queens had seen their chance, and seized it. The Terrillian Queens of the three long lived races, Hayllian, Eyrien and Dhelman, set in motion certain events that would eventually bring them to Power. They slowly leaked stories into the daily gossip in every village. Tales of grotesqueries committed by the dark Jeweled blood against the weaker. They waited for decades, making every public effort of trying to keep the supposed crimes under wraps, but insuring that the false information somehow slipped out. They let the citizens work themselves into a terrified frenzy. And then they orchestrated the real thing.

They hired six dark jeweled males and three females to travel their territories committing these atrocities in broad daylight. To ensure that they and their strength were known. When the Queens finally "came out" with the shocking truth that they'd so carefully constructed, the reaction was forgone. The people, riled by the tales of depravity they'd been spoon fed for years, terrified by the doctored evidence, rose up in defense of themselves, their families, and their lives. 

They attacked their darker Jewel brethren in hordes. The streets became unsafe for those wearing darker than the Blood Opal. A village of braided Jewels can overcome even a strong witch. The Queens let the slaughter rage on for months, horrified by the acts but with no feasible way to stop it, or reason to. After all there is no Blood law against murder. And the dark Jeweled attacks were being kept to a minimum by the ferocity of the people's anger.

Then they revealed that they'd made a shocking discovery; only female members of select, strong, stable blood lines, could handle the dark power without becoming unbalanced. All other Blood females, and males for that matter, would snap under that kind of strain and become a danger to themselves and others. For the females, there was little hope. Strong females were taken young, and properly trained, and occasionally, when needed, sedated. But for females who couldn't be steadied by the courts, and by special guidance from those blessed few women there were two options. They couldn't be left with that power and their choices were death or breaking. A surprising number of witches went to their deaths. There was, however, another option for the males.

These specially blooded females could help the males contain their power, and keep them sane for longer than could be expected on their own. With the aid of a special ring. They called it a Court Ring, and it kept the males well enough in line to serve in the court in some low circle, or simply as a slave. Families paid a great deal to give their unfortunate sons a chance. Novan would had laughed had it not been so deranged, they bought their way into slavery.

Once within a court, with their manhood within a Court Ring, these truly unfortunate males learned the truth about service. They of course rebelled, fought against the corrupt power controlling them. Lashed out at their captors. Which quickly proved the Queens' point. For those males too powerful even to be helped by the Ring, drastic measures had to be taken, for the safely of the people of course. It was added to the short list of acceptable circumstances under which a male could be shaved. They were broken, shaved and turned back out on their own.

Fear was thick anywhere you went. Especially for people like Novan, a Black Jeweled, Warlord Prince. Even though he'd managed to conceal he Jewel of rank for the most part, his Birthright Red was common knowledge and that was more than enough to spook the people around him, even Ringed. He was a useful tool, juggled between the three Queens. Bouncing from Naccia's Dhelman court, to Saerrian's court at Askavi and home to Hayll and Drega. But though he was used by all three bitches, he belonged only to Kylope SaDiablo. He grinned as the whimpering Yellow Jeweled bitch collapsed dead away in a faint, and lengthened his stride.

Kylope SaDiablo rose from the comfortable, leather chair behind her imposing blackwood desk and walked to where a full-length mirror stood in one corner. She anxiously smoothed the silk of her dark blue dress over her slim hips. She tugged at the thick lace that covered what would have been cleavage on he boy flat chest. She pulled her gold set Sapphire Jewel out from beneath that lace band and contemplated it for a moment before tucking it back in. Only to pull it back out to display it prominently against the intricate, white lace that nearly covered the entire square of her neckline, from dress to shoulders. She nearly called in a hairbrush and a finer set of combs but stopped herself just short. She always felt so nervous calling Novan home and she hated herself for it.

Why did she fear him? He was a Ringed male, the whole point of a Ring was to keep dangerous males under their control. The controlling ring had never failed her before she thought, as she looked down at the primary controlling ring on the middle finger of her right hand, right net to her Sapphire ring. So why did he have the power to make her doubt it? She could feel him through it, he had entered the city last night sometime near midnight, and now he was in the damn building, on his way to her office at that very moment.

She walked back to her desk and set herself coquettishly on the edge. She took long deep breaths, it wouldn't do to seem frazzled when he arrived. She carefully formed a mysterious, knowing smile and firmly set her face. There was a firm knock at the door. Kylope took one more deep breath and found herself feeling surprisingly ready to face him again. "Come." She called quite unperturbed.

The door swung open. _Hell's Fire, Mother Night and may the Darkness be merciful, _she thought, as her thought clawed desperately back up near to calm and coherence, and her smoothly entered her office. He hadn't changed in the fifteen or so years since he'd been away, serving those fool women. Black shoes, tailored black pants, fine black silk shirt, perfect sun-kissed skin, perfect black flecked ,gold eyes, the only evidence of his mixed blood. Tousled black hair, fine, chiseled features. He was gorgeous. Then she looked passed the features themselves, to the set of them; he was hard as stone and pissed off. He smiled.

"Kylope." He said softly as he sat in the chair before her desk.

"Novan." She replied, trying for cool and failing miserably.

"So why am I back here now, bitch?" a little tremor ran through her as he dismissed all her power, her influence, and he saw her as any other woman. A woman he hated, that was all she was to him and nothing else about her mattered. She wanted to slap him, she wanted to kiss him. She just wanted to touch his face.

She pursed her lips and suppressed the conflicting emotions, "You know I could have you whipped for that with a snap of my fingers." She said calmly, examining one finely manicured nail.

"So have me whipped." He didn't even twitch an eyelid. Kylope's heart kicked up a notch. She called in a nail file and worked at an imaginary rough edge while she composed herself. But when she turned back to him, he was smiling that feral smile of his and she knew he'd seen through her again.

"You'll stay for a few weeks, of course." She tossed out casually.

"For you and your coven?" he asked disdainfully, "I think not. What do you want?"

She fumed and worried inwardly, "There are reasons you should stay." With worlds of punishment implied.

"Not enough. What's the assignment, Kylope?"

"You should really call me Lady SaDiablo." She couldn't keep suppressing what his disregard for rank did to her. And if someone were to overhear there could be terrible backlash against her.

"That's not your name. You have no right to it."

That just pissed her off, "My family inherited that name from Dorothea SaDiablo." She protested petulantly.

"There's a possibility that someone you're related to married into the woman's distant family. You're stretching history." She opened her mouth to put him in his place, he cut her off, "And you're stretching my patience. What's the job?"

She sent a quick jolt through the Ring, just to remind him who served whom. He didn't even flinch. She would have screamed in frustration if she didn't know she'd be met by that cold smile. And she was sure that smile would drive her mad. She regained her composure before speaking, "There's an important little girl. She lives here." Kylope called in a map of Hayll and pointed to the nameless village in the woods of western Hayll. "She's just come away from her Birthright ceremony with a dark Jewel, the Green or maybe the Sapphire. It-"

"Get to the point, Kylope. Is this a retrieval or a kill?"

She made a vexed noise at the interruption, "Both. I need you to retrieve the girl and kill her guardian and anyone else living with them. Make it look like you killed the girl to. I don't want questions."

"More slander?" he asked dryly, caressing her outer barriers with a Red psychic thread.

Kylope bit her lip and pressed on, "The woman watching the child is a Summer Sky Jeweled, Healer. She's the only healer in the village so they should be easy to locate." She shuddered as he dropped the thread.

"I take it they'll be unwilling then?" he asked calmly.

"Most likely." She tried again, "You're sure you won't stay a few days?"

"I think I'll leave right now." He said, rising smoothly from his chair. He turned to go.

"Novan," she called as he opened the door. He turned back, clearly impatient to be gone. "This is a very important little girl. Don't do her too much emotional damage. I need her able to think, for now anyway. Please?"

He smiled.


	3. Chapter 2

"Rhoae! Wait!" Mirne cried plaintively as she scrambled up the steep incline after her twin sister. Rhoae made a vexed noise in the back of her throat, gracefully flopping down on a nearby stone to wait for her twin sister to catch up. Her huffy breath misted faintly in the crisp morning air, the first sign of winter come to call on their sleepy little village. Rhoae hated winter. It chapped her skin and stung her eyes and made it impossible for her to dress up in the pretty little dresses Cida made for them both. Rhoae did like to dress up, it was one of her favorite pastimes, preening in the mirror, begging to go out, just to hear all the adults gush over how she was getting prettier each day, and the boys too. Rhoae had just discovered boys at the age of eleven and Cida was getting pretty nervous.

There was no doubt in anyone's mind that Rhoae would be a heart breaker in just a few short years. Her perfect, oval face was set with fine, pretty features witch would soon mature into beauty. Perfectly almond shaped eyes were a dark grey, appearing black in most light. Her skin was a glistening, creamy shade of palest gold, a throw back to long forgotten Dhelman relatives in a predominantly short lived line. Thick sable curls framed that blossoming face perfectly. In short, Cida had excellent reason to worry about her young charge.

Rhoae huffed again and rolled her eyes as her younger sister topped the rise. Mirne's blush was hidden by the exertion caused redness spread across her cheeks. She leaned against a tree and fought hard to gather herself quickly, mostly to avoid upsetting her sister any further.

Mirne was a matter completely apart from her sister. She was what Cida insisted on calling "delicate", despite the fact that to everyone else she was simply frail. If she'd wanted to, Cida probably could have snapped one of the poor girl's arms like the twig is resembled. She had a vaguely heart shaped face with very pronounced cheek bones, framed by wild, icy white waves. She had a short nose, too narrow for her face and pointed like a pixie's. Her mouth was too short with lips too plump and pouty for its shape. Her only feature of beauty was her eyes, and those were more lovely than anything Rhoae was, or ever would be. They were large and delicately tilted, with long, thick, pale tipped lashes, but most mesmerizing was their colour. For although her sister's eyes were gray, no matter how you put it, Mirne's eyes sparkled silver. However combined with her pouty mouth the overlarge eyes made her seem always on the verge of tears.

She was unhealthy and constantly falling victim to severe cases of every little sniffle bug or stomach flu that passed through their tiny village. The constant illnesses left her weakened and sickly. She couldn't run and play with the other children without horrible fits; she couldn't even keep up with her sister on this short hike. But she continued to fall ill, no matter what Healing arts Cida plied her with.

"Cida said you should wait for me when we walk together." Mirne protested weakly once her breathing had begun to settle.

Rhoae rolled her eyes again, "Well if you'd only keep up with me in the first place," she tossed back, "we wouldn't have this problem now would we?" She knew it was a ridiculous statement the second it left her mouth and she flushed slightly with embarrassment, but she pushed on even as Mirne opened her mouth to protest. "Besides, this is important. I want to start my Craft lessons out on the right foot. These are a big dealfor _me._ You wouldn't understand"

Mirne's beautiful eyes widened in shock at the cruel remark from her sister. She quickly looked down to hide her face as she fought the tears she felt rising. She was keenly aware of the Sapphire stone that hung in a little pouch around Rhoae's neck. And she was even further aware of the White Jewel that hung in a similar pouch at her own belt.

It wouldn't have bothered her at all if she had been on her own, or even if they had just been sisters instead of twins. But no one, least of all Mirne understood was she was so far removed from her sister. Their castes were unofficial but everyone knew Rhoae was a little Queen in the making. No one really bothered to check on Mirne while her sister was in the room but she was pretty sure of the itching in her right ring finger. She expected a snake tooth in the next few years but not much else.

Rhoae always felt bad when she said things like that to Mirne, but she just couldn't seem to help it. When they were alone, especially when the matter of Craft came up these cruel words just seemed to roll right off her tongue. But she just couldn't seem to make herself take it back. It felt like admitting something that she wasn't even ready to think about, let alone confirm.

She squirmed uncomfortably for a moment before Mirne raised her head, clear eyes subdued. "Well then," she started shakily, "I guess we should hurry up."

Hours later as they returned home, Rhoae did her very best to match her pace to her drained sister, as a sort of silent apology for her earlier barbs. The Craft tutor they were seeing pushed them hard and while Rhoae was excelling and thriving under the praise success garnered, Mirne was exhausted and crushed under the public reprimands she received when she couldn't keep up with the lesson.

Mistress Pollsa tutored all the youths in the four nearest villages on the uses of their Birthright Jewels, and she certainly believed in tough love. If you were failing it was because of a lack of effort, and slacking would not be tolerated. Mirne's Jewel hummed listlessly at the corners of Rhoae's perception, begging for a very long rest. Rhoae was sure that Cida would deal with this horrible woman just as soon as they explained the situation to her.

Their picturesque little cottage slowly came into view around a bend in the road but what they saw there standing right smack in the middle of their lives stopped the girls dead in their tracks. He looked to be in his twenties but he was clearly long lived so there was no way to know for sure. He saw them round the bend and smiled an almost frightening smile that just didn't quite make them run.

As the girls approached him, hand in hand, he crouched down from his considerable height to eye level with them, though he didn't even glance at Mirne. "You then would be Rhoae." There was no way to take that as a question. His voice was so smooth it didn't even break the silence of the woods but instead seemed to change it, to something sinister. He pressed on "How would you like to come with me on a little trip? Look here, I've already packed a few of your things." He gestured to the little blue suitcase which was the only luggage in sight.

"What about my sister?"

_Sister?_ Novan thought as he glanced at the other girl before him, _who could have guessed that. Strange Kylope didn't mention it. She must be working on some pretty basic intelligence._ His smile change, and now the girls knew they should have run, just as they knew that now it was too late. "She can't go where we're going. Do you know what the Courts are? That's where I'm taking you."

"Where Cida?" he was taken by surprise when the sister spoke. He decided to ignore her.

"Come on then." He took his charge by the arm and started towards the nearest wind, ignoring the screamed protests and valiant but fruitless attacks on his person. Mirne landed a good, solid kick to the back of his knee throwing him off balance momentarily. She grabbed at the fist still firmly holding her sister and bit down hard, but not nearly hard enough.

Novan took hold of her by her strange white hair fully prepared to kill her as he had been told to. But something stilled his mind as he gathered the small speck of power it would take to snuff out her life. Something stayed his hand as he stared into those silver eyes. He didn't like what he saw there. He tossed her aside and dove toward the Green wind in front of him.

He tried desperately to rid his mind of that horrible encounter, forget that strange girl and the crushing reflection in those silver eyes. In those eyes he saw himself more clearly than he had in years. In those eyes he saw the compromises and the apathy; he saw every exception he had ever made every blind eye he had ever turned. In those eyes was every flaw he'd ever found in himself. In those eyes he had wanted to drown.


End file.
